stores and reinforcements from the interior; thus omitting no measure of precaution which a just estimate of his enemy’s strength seemed to require. ♦THE ALLIES WAIT IN THEIR CANTONMENTS FOR BETTER WEATHER.♦ The weather, by impeding for a while any advance on the part of the allies, allowed him time for this. Lord Wellington waited till it should become more favourable, having obtained possession of a large tract of country, and being in a situation from whence to resume his operations with advantage, as soon as the season might permit. Upon first entering France he had circulated among the inhabitants those general orders in which he enjoined his troops to respect their persons and property, accompanying them with a brief proclamation to the people. He had given, he said, and would enforce these positive orders for preventing those evils that might otherwise be looked for as the ordinary consequences of an invasion, which they knew was the result of their own government’s invasion of Spain, and of the victories of the allied armies. He requested them to apprehend and bring before him any person who, disobeying these instructions, might offer them any injury; and, on their side, he required them to remain in their houses, and take no part in the war of which their country was now to be the scene. Great injury must inevitably be endured by the inhabitants of any country upon which that visitation falls; but none was suffered now which could be prevented by vigilant discipline, founded upon just views of policy and a strict sense of justice. On the morning after the line of the Nivelle had been forced, a peasant was brought before Lord Wellington, having been taken near the British outposts: the man’s simple account of himself was, that he was going to drive his sheep to Bayonne; upon which he was told that he might go where he pleased, and take his sheep where he pleased too. When the French saw that the peasantry were thus treated, ... that the very few who were taken in arms were shipped off, like other prisoners, for England, ... and that marauders were brought to summary punishment, they perceived that their invaders were as equitable as they were brave, and that the word of a British general was sacred. ♦NOV. 28.♦